In Letters
by Equestrienne Dreams
Summary: It began with a letter. Isobel/Clarkson, during the Great War and her sojourn in France. Disregards S3.
1. Like a Green Girl

**Author's Note: **_I blame Lavender-and-Hay. Again. __  
_

* * *

_Dear Dr Clarkson,_

_Perhaps this is terribly forward of me, writing to a man who is not a relative. And yet, I find I do not care. I am a widowed woman with a grown son and too many years behind me to care for propriety now. France is such a lonely place, bleak and cold. Half the nurses are girls just out of the schoolroom, wide-eyed and naïve, and none of them have even a fraction of Lady Sybil's natural talent or cool competency._

_Which brings me to the main point of this letter. How are things at Downton? I must confess to finding it rather strange, working with doctors who are not you. It's all so brisk here, more brutal than Downton by far. There's so little time for the human touch, it's just one patient after the next, a never-ending stream of pain and despair. I find myself remembering my work at Manchester General, all those years ago, and yet I see more death and agony in one day here than I did in a week at Manchester. I wish…_

_Oh, listen to me, rattling on like a silly old woman. This isn't the first war I've seen, though I hope to God it's the last, but still there are moments I find myself shaking like a green girl at the brutality of it all. Every so often I'll see a blond, blue-eyed boy and my heart will start to pound and all I can do is pray it is not my Matthew. I honestly don't know if I…_

_And there I go again. But I can't tell anyone else, you see. No one else knows how terribly wearing it can all be. It rather has to be lived, doesn't it? And battlefield medicine more than most. You would know, after Afghanistan and Africa. I can only imagine how awful it must be on the front lines, if this Is what I see in the relative safety of Paris. And I can only imagine what you went through, all those years ago._

_I was so foolish to leave, I can see that now. Hardheaded and foolish. I'm afraid I rather let power go to my head, as I do sometimes. And yet I still believe I was in the right, in principle if not execution. And I was so terribly selfish, wanting all the credit. Of that, I must confess, I truly am ashamed. But I cannot turn back now, and not just because of my pride. I am so desperately needed here, I wasn't wrong about that. Every capable hand is needed. I sent myself out here, and I shall see the task through. _

_I am posting this before I can think better of it. Whatever else you may think, please try not to think badly of me._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Isobel Crawley_


	2. That Must Be Lived

_My dear Nurse Crawley,_

_I was both surprised and immensely gratified to receive your letter. Of course you may write to me about anything you like. I know we have not always got on, but I have always respected you and, dare I say, considered you a friend. Medicine is something that must be lived to be understood, and you always have, sometimes when no one else did._

_Downton remains Downton. Lady Sybil is a born nurse, but, I must confess, she hasn't your experience or your touch. I find myself calling for you without thinking, only to remember that you are miles away. In the safety of correspondence I can admit that no one else has ever been able to read my mind the way you can. I never had to ask for anything, because you would have it ready and waiting without my having to say a word. And I find… I find that I do miss you. Perhaps now I am the one who is too forward, but you are in France likely for the duration, and if the knowledge is some form of comfort to you in that lonely place I give it to you freely. Your fears are anything but silly. It is those of us who know war who have the sense to be afraid of it._

_Perhaps you were foolish. You never have been willing to back down from a fight, you know. It's one of the things I admire most about you. But you have such a generous heart, it never occurs to you that others may not. If you were truly as selfish as you claim, you'd have never taken yourself off to a war zone to lend your services there. I know that work; it is bloody and brutal, and not glamorous at all. Have no doubt of yourself on that score, Nurse Crawley. If you ever doubt that you are one of the most selfless women in England, pause for a moment and look at where you are. And remember that any hospital, anywhere, ought to be grateful to have you._

_As for your son – I wish I could tell you that I know how you feel, but we both know I cannot. I wish I could tell you that it would get easier, but you know I cannot do that either. All I can give you is my faith that you will come through this as you have come through everything else. _

_And one more thing, before I overstep my bounds completely. If we are to continue corresponding – and I sincerely hope we are – please, do me the honour of calling me Richard._

_My thoughts are with you. Please, come home safe. Until then, I am,_

_Sincerely yours,_

_Richard Clarkson_


	3. An Impersonal Kind of Useful

_Dear Richard,_

_In that case, you absolutely must call me Isobel. Truthfully it's a privilege I ought to have extended you long before now, only you were always my superior at the hospital and it never felt quite right. Now, though, I find it is exactly what I need to feel some sort of connection with home, no matter how small._

_I cannot tell you how relieved I was to receive your letter. I don't think anyone can survive this sort of thing intact without someone to talk to, and even when you disagreed with me you have always understood me, which is far more than I can say for most people. In truth I miss it there at the hospital. I felt so useful. You never looked at me with scorn, only as someone to be depended upon to boil water or assist you in surgery. It was the one place I truly felt myself, aside from my little garden. I suppose in a way it always has been._

_Which isn't to say I don't feel useful here – quite the contrary, in fact. But it's an impersonal kind of useful, if you understand me. The nurses come and they go, and we've none of us the time to get to know each other in these circumstances. They know Nurse Crawley, but not Isobel. And yet I can't say I regret it. I am doing good, that much I know, and if Isobel must suffer in silence then suffer she will. _

_Your words do flatter me, Richard, please don't think they don't. Only I have quite a time seeing the woman you paint to me. Perhaps sometimes I do, but in truth I do feel terribly selfish more often than not, longing for home when these boys have been in the trenches for months on end. I've been here scarcely a month and already I think I ought to board the next train for London. And yet, in a way the very idea of leaving is unbearable. I couldn't think of leaving these poor boys, and yet alone at night when there is nothing but silence I want nothing more. _

_Oh, enough of my puling. I hope you are all right at Downton, truly I do. It's good work you're doing there, the best of work, and I thank you so very much for agreeing to take it on. It's something that means a great deal, and it means even more with your support behind me, however grudging it may have been sometimes! _

_The light is fading fast and we've no candles to waste, so I must close this quickly. Do take care of yourself, Richard. I am,_

_Most sincerely yours,_

_Isobel Crawley_


	4. To Be Better Than I Am

_My dear Isobel,_

_You need never suffer in silence. Not with me. I remember well the horrors of a war zone. In truth I feel useless here. You are kind to say I am doing good work, but part of me wishes to be there with you, working together as we did in the old days before you went away. I feel ancient now, good for little, while you are there in the thick of it, enduring God only knows what whilst I am safe in my bed each night. Would that I could share your burden! I cannot say I miss the horrors of war, but I do so wish I could do more than I am here at Downton._

_As for those who only know Nurse Crawley, I can do nothing but pity them. Isobel is a woman I would never give up knowing, no matter how she has infuriated me over the years. I think I prefer you infuriating. No one has ever challenged me the way you do, Isobel. We are both of us healers but you make me want to be better than I am._

_Perhaps I speak too frankly. But I will let my words stand, if only to know they might bring you some comfort in the night. I know how lonely you must be, and if my words can ease your pain even a little then the buffer of paper and ink makes me brave enough to speak them._

_I remember a young man many years ago, working in a field hospital in Africa. The screams of dying men echoed in his ears at night, leaving him sleepless and numb with pain. Every hour was another surgery, another death, another man crippled beyond endurance, and all he could do was work and work on the next patient, and the next, and the next, praying to make a difference. And yet for every man he helped, for every man he healed, another died alone and in pain when there was no difference to make. _

_And to this day, on the worst of nights those screams still echo in his ears, and he still wakes up sweating and reaching for a surgeon's knife that is not there._

_I can only hope to help drown those screams for you, Isobel, even if only in some small way. There is no shame in longing for home; in truth, I would be stunned if you did not. You are human, not a saint, and there is no shame in admitting it. It does not make what you are doing any less courageous. I would dare to say it makes you more so. _

_I conclude with news that may interest you: Lady Edith is becoming quite a capable nurse, even more so than she was when you left. I think you would be proud of how far she has come. In many ways, she begins to remind me of you._

_Remember, Isobel, you are no good to others if you do not take care of yourself. I know you would work yourself into exhaustion long before you stopped to rest, but the work you do makes it even more important that you stay rested and sane. Even you cannot heal everyone. I am,_

_Most sincerely yours,_

_Richard Clarkson_


	5. Perhaps More Than I Ought

_Dear Richard,_

_I don't mind admitting that I wish you were here, too. Oh, not because I'd wish this on you, please don't ever think that, but because it would be easier if I weren't so totally alone. Your letters are often my only comfort and even letters can only do so much._

_It's funny, it's not the screams that are the worst. I thought they would be. No, it's the crying. Men writing letters to wives, lovers, children about how they won't come home whole. And none of them do. Even when we save the leg, or the arm, what they survive changes them. So many are depressed, wishing they had died instead. We can't fix that. But oh, God, Richard, I wish I could!_

_I don't know if I'll come home whole, either. Does anyone? We all come out of this changed, your last letter showed me that. I can't imagine how it's haunted you. I don't want to imagine how it will haunt me. I should have stayed. I shouldn't have stayed. _

_The words in your last letter swim in my mind. I miss you, too. Some days more desperately than others. I miss the way you'd depend upon me. I miss the way you'd challenge me when I was wrong. We worked so well together, you and I. Everyone's so distant here. Even if they did know Isobel, I am not sure they would care to. _

_Oh, Richard, never think your work less important than mine. There is so little here we can do for their spirits. That's the beauty of Downton. It gives hearts a place to heal, not just bodies. I miss that part of nursing so desperately. I miss everything so desperately. I am so glad Cousin Edith is doing well. And I am sure it is doing her good to do some good. I remember at that dinner when the officers saluted her, and the quiet work she had been doing for the soldiers. I was reminded that night of the attitude I should have had – the same attitude she did have. At least I remembered in the end. Perhaps I did walk off in a huff, but I couldn't stay in it, not here._

_Perhaps I needed France as much as France needed me. Now there's a thought._

_While I've still the nerve to say it, I can't thank you enough for your letters. I do miss you, perhaps more than I ought to, but what can I do about that? My connection to the Great House is by proxy only, through Matthew. But you and I, we came to know each other through the hospital, where I was Nurse Crawley in my own right, not just the mother of the future Earl. And I don't mind admitting, to you at least, that I far prefer the former to the latter. I do know I felt more at home in your hospital ward than I did anywhere else in Yorkshire, and despite our arguments – or perhaps because of them – that was due in large part to you, who saw me as Nurse Crawley first and foremost, and then, later, as simply Isobel._

_You are not the only one made brave by the buffer of paper and ink, my dear man._

_I am, _

_Most sincerely yours,_

_Isobel Crawley_


	6. Nothing Simple About Her

_My dear Isobel,_

_I know very well that if you could, you would heal the world. Sometimes I forget you can't heal anything and everything you come across by pure will alone. If anyone could, it is you. _

_And I know how it must cut at you, when there is so little one can do to mend a broken heart. I wish you knew the good you were doing, just by being there. Whatever the other nurses do or do not have time for, I know you have been doing everything you can to soothe them. Just remember that there is only so much you can do. In the end, it is up to them to heal themselves, no matter how it leaves us feeling powerless. _

_I wish… oh, Isobel, while you were here I was too frustrated with your idealism to appreciate what you have been to me for so long, and now I wish for nothing more than to have you here and to be frustrated by your idealism again. You were a constant reminder of why a young, enthusiastic schoolboy wanted to go into medicine, and of the heart and passion he has lost over the last few decades._

_And you do not have to write his name, Isobel, for me to read between the lines of your letters. I know you worry so about Matthew. He is, after all, your only child. But you have raised a fine man. I cannot promise you he will return safely, you know I cannot. But if anyone has a reason to survive, it is him._

_As for you… I know you will come home changed. Perhaps you are right, and you did need France as much as France needed you. But you are not alone in this, Isobel. Never alone. Remember the good you are doing, for you are doing good. Whatever your connection to the Great House, that has never been what I see when I look at you. I find I, too, prefer Nurse Crawley to the mother of the next Earl of Grantham. You always did seem more at ease in the hospital than in the sitting room at Downton, and our correspondence has begun to show me why. _

_But even more than Nurse Crawley, I find I miss "simply Isobel", for there is nothing simple about her. Only healers, as I have said before, can truly understand other healers, or so I have come to believe, and I think it is that about you I miss the most. True healers are born, not bred, and you, my dear one, are a healer to the bone. I miss your optimism, your understanding, your gentle smile, your quiet efficiency, and the way you always knew what I needed without my having to say a word, be it an instrument in surgery or your strength during a bad case. I even miss your stubbornness, and the way you never stopped fighting for what you believed was right. _

_For all it is worth, I wish I could help you through the pain. Please know that. I know how badly France needs you, and I cannot begrudge them that. I can only keep in mind what you said about Downton, about it being a place for hearts to heal, and not just bodies. I do hope you are right. It is the very least we can do for these boys, after what they have endured in the trenches. But for God's sake, Isobel, I wish you were here to share it._

_I am, _

_Most sincerely yours,_

_Richard Clarkson_


	7. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

_My dear Richard,_

_The war continues apace and my heart breaks a little more every day._

_The night is full dark and the candles are burning low. I lost a dozen today, the highest ever, and there were more I never worked with personally. I am too numb to cry and too heartbroken to sleep. I cannot escape the dark and I cannot escape the memories. I have your letters here, all of them, and I keep reading them over and over by candlelight because I cannot sleep and I cannot sit alone in the silence._

_I can hear your voice in my ear, you know. Your words are only on paper but I can hear every cadence and inflection as though you were sitting beside me, and I cling to every syllable as if it were a lullaby. If only they could be one! But even that is not enough. Perhaps it would be if you were here with me. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps._

_I have said too much and yet I cannot say enough. I miss you. I need you but even more than that I need to finish this and I need you to be safe, my dear man. You are my tether to sanity and without you I would be lost, even if it is only words on paper that cannot be a lullaby. How does anyone survive this?_

_You are…_

_You are. You are._

_I cannot finish. I cannot say it aloud except that I need you and I need you safe and I miss you the way I would miss a limb and it is still too much and it is still not enough._

_Oh, this thrice-damned war! It sheds new light on old wounds even as it tears new ones open. Do you know what I am saying? What I am trying to say? What I cannot say though I want to scream it?_

_The candles are burning low and the moon is a sliver in the sky. I am too numb to be guarded and I am too guarded to say what I want to shout._

_Three letters. Is that all it takes to see by new light? I have only three letters of yours and yet I feel as though I can't live without them. Without the connection, without the kindness, without the understanding. This is number four. Seven letters in all and yet I am trembling on the knife's edge of something I cannot find the words to say._

_I cannot say it and I want to scream it. I shouldn't be trying to say it at all. Foolish Isobel! who never did learn to guard her heart. But the candles are burning low and night strips everything away, even and perhaps especially good sense. But I cannot find good sense now. It is too fast. It isn't fast enough._

_Can you read what I cannot say? _

_The candles are dying and so am I, slowly, slowly, slowly._

_I have said too much, and not enough._

_I am,_

_Forever yours,_

_Isobel Crawley_


	8. And Clear As Sunlight

_My Isobel,_

_I love you._

_There it is, plain as day and clear as sunlight. I love you, Isobel, and I hope to God above that what you cannot say is that you love me, too. Scream it from the rafters, my darling, because I love you, I love you, I love you._

_I thought my chance had gone, really I did. And then I met a woman with healing hands and a spine of steel and the kindest heart I'd ever known, who would break herself in service to her country and her patients because she cannot imagine doing anything else. I met a woman with hair like spun silk and a smile brighter than the stars who infuriated me so badly I didn't know what to do with myself and who I couldn't imagine doing without until I did have to do without her and found myself more lost every day._

_I am not a man given to grand declarations or effusions, Isobel, but I cannot take your hands and tell you how I want you and so my words must do it for me across miles that seem infinite. I may be in Yorkshire but my heart is far away in France and so it shall be until you come home._

_Come home to me, Isobel. Stay for the duration if you can, do what you must for as long as you must, but at the end of it all when the war is done please, my darling, darling girl, tell me you'll come home to me._

_Three letters indeed! By the end of your second you had won me completely. The stark truth of missing you, and what you revealed to me in those letters, forced me to realise what I should have seen long ago. You are my lodestar and you have been since the first day I worked beside you. If being separated from you for the duration was what it took to force my hand than I cannot be sorry, except for the horrors you have endured in France. I think you know, Isobel, that I would spare you whatever I could, and I only love you more when I remember that you'd never spare yourself._

_I can still see your face in my dreams, you know. I can remember your hair shining in the sun, a colour that reminded me so much of clover honey and sunshine. I can remember the way your eyes light up and the set of your jaw when you're determined to have your way. I remember the way your eyes sparked when you fought with me and the way that plain cotton of your dress swirled around your ankles and the way you looked as you bent to your work and your cool competence in the face of chaos._

_But more than anything else, Isobel, I remember the way you smile when you're truly happy, and thinking of you alone in France makes me want more than anything to board the next train and do whatever it takes to make you smile like that again, for I sense there have been precious few of them these long months. I cannot spare you the grief of losing patients or the horrors of war, but Isobel, you needn't bear it alone._

_I could write pages, and pages again, but instead I am posting this with all due haste and praying that I haven't read you wrong. If I did, I am sorry, but I'll retract none of it. I love you, Isobel, and the truth would have outed itself with or without the will of either of us. Love always does, in the end._

_I expect nothing from you, Isobel. But heaven help me, I am praying for everything._

_I am ever, ever yours,_

_Richard_


	9. The Stuff of Poetry

_My Richard,_

_My Richard. What else is there? You haven't read me wrong, you must know you haven't. I knew you would. You always did, you see._

_Oh, Richard, I feel like I've just stepped into sunlight for the first time in six months. More than sunlight, even. Are there words for this? It's a radiant beam of light into a world so dark and cold I can hardly bear it even on the best of days._

_No, that doesn't say enough. Nothing can say enough, except perhaps for this: my dear man, my dear, darling, wonderful man, I love you. There it is and I will scream it from the rafters if you'll let me, my darling, because this is mine. This is mine and this is ours and nothing has ever felt like this._

_I love you. I love you. And again: I love you. I am so in love with you. _

_Never mind reserve. Never mind propriety. Here in the privacy of letters I can scream and shout with joy. _

_The candles are dying, Richard, but I am more alive than I have ever been. _

_And here's something you didn't know: I have loved you since 1912. Almost from the first. There were days I wanted to hit you and days I wanted to strangle you but never a day went by that I didn't love you. I didn't know it then, of course. How could I? Reggie and I had been a gentle affair, based on affection and common interest. I loved him, of course I did, in the only way I knew how to love at eighteen. By twenty-eight I was a widow with a toddler and no conception of who I was outside my husband and son. So I turned back to nursing and I raised my son and I never looked outside of my little boy and my work at the hospital. They were all I needed until he was grown and I had to learn, really and truly, just who Isobel Crawley was and what she was made of. And so I did, in a clinic in Yorkshire with a maddening healer who lit a fire inside me that never seemed to die._

_Never did I dream this kind of love would find me. It was the stuff of poetry and fairy tales, after all, certainly nothing that could ever happen to a middle-aged single mother. And then you became my confidant and my lifeline through the horror that is this war and everything I thought I knew about love was turned on its head. For the first time I know what it is to burn._

_I cannot be sorry, Richard. If it took France for me to find you then France it had to take, and I'd do it a hundred years more if I could come home to you at the end. I want to come home to you. I need to come home to you. I have been many things to many people over the years – nurse, mother, daughter, wife. Never have I been simply Isobel, not to anyone. But to you, I think, I can be. And oh, Richard, I want to be._

_The first instant, Richard. The first instant I am free I will be on the next train north. Nothing, my darling, could make me love you more than your understanding of why I have to stay. And the only reason I can survive the duration is knowing that when I come home it will be to your arms. Until then,_

_I am forever,_

_Your Isobel_


	10. Fire and Light

_My darling Isobel,_

_I cannot begin to tell you what a joy it is to see you like this after so long, even if only through a letter. That I am partly responsible is almost more than I can bear, in the very best sense of the phrase._

_It could only ever have been you for me, I know that now. Oh, my hands are shaking as I write this. 'Simply Isobel' is all I have ever wanted, though I hardly knew it until these past long months._

_It feels so odd, to be writing you love letters in the midst of all this death and destruction. And yet what do we fight for, my Isobel, if not for love itself? How much easier Africa or Afghanistan would have been had I had you to fight for! I cannot be sorry I didn't, since where your life has led you is what made you the woman you are. And yet… I don't mind admitting, Isobel, that I would have liked a life with you. Oh, my love, I would have liked that very much indeed._

_But never mind that now. Not now I know you are coming home to me. Who can regret the past when the future is so bright? Bright and warm and lovely._

_You are so warm, Isobel. Fire and light. Warm smiles, warm touches, warm words. Even at your most cutting your good nature shines through. Perhaps it is that about you I miss the most. Your warmth. Everything seems colder without you here._

_I've never seen you with your hair down, you know. Will that, too, be fire and light? I can see you now, the clover honey colour rippling down your back, spread full and heavy over your shoulders. Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking these things, but with you so far away I must conjure up the waves of your hair and the glow of your eyes and know every moment that my imagination is but a shadow of the reality._

_Oh, Isobel my love. You are not the only one burning._

_Do I dare tell you what I dream of now? And yet you must know they are all of you. Your hair, spilling down your back. Your smile, so bright even on the darkest days. The swish of your skirts and swirl of your petticoats as you move from one hospital bed to another. Your voice, soft and sweet as poetry. The fire in your eyes when you challenge me – or anyone. I could watch you at work for hours, Isobel, and never tire of the sight. You have such a quiet competence about you, and a passion, too. You would fight, I know, for every patient to come through your door, no matter how hopeless the cause. You fought for this hopeless cause, after all, and won the day. _

_Do you kiss with the same passion you fight, Isobel? Will your mouth on mine be fire and light, too?_

_Enough, and enough again. I am not practised in love letters but with you I cannot stop, and yet I find I must before I cannot focus on my work for want of you._

_The very minute, Isobel. The very minute you are home, so help me, I will never let you go again. I am,_

_As I ever shall be,_

_Your Richard_


End file.
